Thursday, May 20, 2004
angry american, part one
Okay, maybe it's just 'cuz I more than a little tired.
Maybe it's because it's 7:30 on a Thursday and I'm having "Friends" withdrawal.
(Rerun? Not unless he's with Raj and D'wayne. . . Hey hey hey!)
Maybe it's because for the first time in many, many months I am alone in my home. The Wife and The Boy are hundreds of miles away, on a weekend trek to take The Boy to see his still relatively new Grandparents.
(okay, that's not it at all. . . I'm honestly enjoying the solitude.)
Maybe it's because I'm halfway to drunk and accelerating.
(more likely)
Whatever the reason. . .
The Good Doctor Noyz is pissed off.
Pissed off at every level of government: local, state, federal.
Fuck them all. The spineless self-serving camera-primping egotistical self-righteous bastards.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not some anti-American-commie-loving-pinko-heathen-liberal-hippie-tree-hugging-dope-smoking-long-haired-maggot-infested-artistic-FM-radio-type.
Well. . . okay, I used to be.
Like the rest of us, I went through that wacky collegiate young adult experimental finding myself phase.
But, as you age and grow in experience and wisdom, you ultimately look back to the value system in which you were raised.
My parents taught me that America is the Land of Freedom; the Land where anybody can grow up to be President or an Astronaut.
And to take off my hat when I enter a building.
America is the Land of Opportunity, where with a purity of spirit and strength of effort anyone can be anything their heart wishes them to be.
One of my most vivid memories of childhood is sitting stuck in constuction traffic heading south on I-35 heading into Kansas City in the backseat of some boat of a 1970's Chrysler sedan. We were in the midst of the obligatory cross country family summer vacation. My dad's got the radio on. He tells me to listen and to pay attention to the radio. He tells me history is being made. . . I vividly remember listening to Nixon's resignation speech live on the radio.
Although the "President of the Greatest Nation in the Modern World" was bagging it and hitting the street in the midst of corruption, scandal, and the greatest crisis our nation had known since the Civil War; did my father lose faith in America? Did he seemed concerned that anarchy and chaos might break out at any moment?
No. He did not. He just wanted to get out of the damn traffic jam and hurry to Kansas City so that we could go swimming in the motel pool and he could chill with a coupla cold ones.
And the value of believing in America was further instilled.
So, now I'm a few months shy of thirty years down the road from that day and I find myself losing faith; losing faith in the Institutions I was taught to believe in.
Why?
Several reasons.
My thoughts about the way the current regime is handling things are to some extent already ranted about and really not the subject of this one. So, let's get to the first reason that I'm really fucking just pissed off. . .
One of my teaching assistants is the single mother of two teenage children with significant disabilities. Her self-less dedication and devotion to her children is beyond reproach. Her life literally revolves around making a better world for those kids.
Her sense of selflessness extends well beyond her family to serving the needs of those around her. Two or three days a week she brings me lunch. Not because I don't have a lunch of my own (and wow! can she ever freaking cook! it's not food, it's not a meal, it's fucking art!), it's just that she wants to help and take care of everybody.
She is the hardest working person I have ever met. She is tireless.
Or so she was.
Now she is tired, exhausted from the fight, and damn near beyond all appeals to the point where nothing in this world can save her.
In thirty days she, along with her two teenage children with significant disabilities, will be deported.
She will be deported to a land where, as she has shown me in front page photos from newspapers from her homeland, she will swing from the gallows.
Her children will either be killed outright or chained in "asylums".
Why?
Because she's from Iran.
Because she's from Iran, the government of the land of the free and the home of the brave is going to send her back. That's it. Period.
She applied for asylum and for a visa. Denied. She filed and lost her appeal. The American government did not even consider her case. They just said "no".
"the home of the brave"?
Yeah, right. . . the American government is apparently fucking afraid of a middle-aged single mom because her native language vastly differs from our own and her god has a different name.
Is she a criminal? No. Is she a terrorist? Most definitely not, and anybody that so much as suggests the possibility to me will receive a swift kick in the groin.
She's just a single mom. Five years ago she packed up her two children and fled Iran after spending nine or so days being beaten and tortured in an Iranian prison because someone overheard her dissing the mullahs.
She's told stories about being there, in Iran, during the big war against the Bush's first friend, then enemy, now prisoner, that quite frankly, freak the shit out of me that she made it through it all as a single mother with her two children with significant disabilities. . . stories about watching the missles fly overhead, wondering "who's names are on that bomb?". . . stories about her relatives being tortured and murdered by a fanatical regime.
She grabbed her children and they made their way here, to the "land of opportunity". She got a decent tax-paying job and a half-way decent apartment; and although it is a constant effort, she is making a better life for herself and her children.
She is living the dream that is America.
But, because of the "War on Terror", apparently people from certain parts of the world are "bad", and another fanatical regime will not allow her the opportunity to follow that dream.
If she were from Cuba they would throw her a fucking parade. The blatant abhorrent hypocrisy makes me wanna spew.
Crazy? Yep. Fucked up? Yes. But not without precedent.
So fuck 'em. Fuck the god-damned paranoid government bastards that want to send her back. Fuck them all.
And although I've got more to rant about this issue and several others, my cup runneth empty, and I'm tired of staring at this damned screen.
So, my dear reader, more to come. . .
|
Maybe it's because it's 7:30 on a Thursday and I'm having "Friends" withdrawal.
(Rerun? Not unless he's with Raj and D'wayne. . . Hey hey hey!)
Maybe it's because for the first time in many, many months I am alone in my home. The Wife and The Boy are hundreds of miles away, on a weekend trek to take The Boy to see his still relatively new Grandparents.
(okay, that's not it at all. . . I'm honestly enjoying the solitude.)
Maybe it's because I'm halfway to drunk and accelerating.
(more likely)
Whatever the reason. . .
The Good Doctor Noyz is pissed off.
Pissed off at every level of government: local, state, federal.
Fuck them all. The spineless self-serving camera-primping egotistical self-righteous bastards.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not some anti-American-commie-loving-pinko-heathen-liberal-hippie-tree-hugging-dope-smoking-long-haired-maggot-infested-artistic-FM-radio-type.
Well. . . okay, I used to be.
Like the rest of us, I went through that wacky collegiate young adult experimental finding myself phase.
But, as you age and grow in experience and wisdom, you ultimately look back to the value system in which you were raised.
My parents taught me that America is the Land of Freedom; the Land where anybody can grow up to be President or an Astronaut.
And to take off my hat when I enter a building.
America is the Land of Opportunity, where with a purity of spirit and strength of effort anyone can be anything their heart wishes them to be.
One of my most vivid memories of childhood is sitting stuck in constuction traffic heading south on I-35 heading into Kansas City in the backseat of some boat of a 1970's Chrysler sedan. We were in the midst of the obligatory cross country family summer vacation. My dad's got the radio on. He tells me to listen and to pay attention to the radio. He tells me history is being made. . . I vividly remember listening to Nixon's resignation speech live on the radio.
Although the "President of the Greatest Nation in the Modern World" was bagging it and hitting the street in the midst of corruption, scandal, and the greatest crisis our nation had known since the Civil War; did my father lose faith in America? Did he seemed concerned that anarchy and chaos might break out at any moment?
No. He did not. He just wanted to get out of the damn traffic jam and hurry to Kansas City so that we could go swimming in the motel pool and he could chill with a coupla cold ones.
And the value of believing in America was further instilled.
So, now I'm a few months shy of thirty years down the road from that day and I find myself losing faith; losing faith in the Institutions I was taught to believe in.
Why?
Several reasons.
My thoughts about the way the current regime is handling things are to some extent already ranted about and really not the subject of this one. So, let's get to the first reason that I'm really fucking just pissed off. . .
One of my teaching assistants is the single mother of two teenage children with significant disabilities. Her self-less dedication and devotion to her children is beyond reproach. Her life literally revolves around making a better world for those kids.
Her sense of selflessness extends well beyond her family to serving the needs of those around her. Two or three days a week she brings me lunch. Not because I don't have a lunch of my own (and wow! can she ever freaking cook! it's not food, it's not a meal, it's fucking art!), it's just that she wants to help and take care of everybody.
She is the hardest working person I have ever met. She is tireless.
Or so she was.
Now she is tired, exhausted from the fight, and damn near beyond all appeals to the point where nothing in this world can save her.
In thirty days she, along with her two teenage children with significant disabilities, will be deported.
She will be deported to a land where, as she has shown me in front page photos from newspapers from her homeland, she will swing from the gallows.
Her children will either be killed outright or chained in "asylums".
Why?
Because she's from Iran.
Because she's from Iran, the government of the land of the free and the home of the brave is going to send her back. That's it. Period.
She applied for asylum and for a visa. Denied. She filed and lost her appeal. The American government did not even consider her case. They just said "no".
"the home of the brave"?
Yeah, right. . . the American government is apparently fucking afraid of a middle-aged single mom because her native language vastly differs from our own and her god has a different name.
Is she a criminal? No. Is she a terrorist? Most definitely not, and anybody that so much as suggests the possibility to me will receive a swift kick in the groin.
She's just a single mom. Five years ago she packed up her two children and fled Iran after spending nine or so days being beaten and tortured in an Iranian prison because someone overheard her dissing the mullahs.
She's told stories about being there, in Iran, during the big war against the Bush's first friend, then enemy, now prisoner, that quite frankly, freak the shit out of me that she made it through it all as a single mother with her two children with significant disabilities. . . stories about watching the missles fly overhead, wondering "who's names are on that bomb?". . . stories about her relatives being tortured and murdered by a fanatical regime.
She grabbed her children and they made their way here, to the "land of opportunity". She got a decent tax-paying job and a half-way decent apartment; and although it is a constant effort, she is making a better life for herself and her children.
She is living the dream that is America.
But, because of the "War on Terror", apparently people from certain parts of the world are "bad", and another fanatical regime will not allow her the opportunity to follow that dream.
If she were from Cuba they would throw her a fucking parade. The blatant abhorrent hypocrisy makes me wanna spew.
Crazy? Yep. Fucked up? Yes. But not without precedent.
So fuck 'em. Fuck the god-damned paranoid government bastards that want to send her back. Fuck them all.
And although I've got more to rant about this issue and several others, my cup runneth empty, and I'm tired of staring at this damned screen.
So, my dear reader, more to come. . .
|
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